


Semblance

by literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Bisexual Character, Dishonored: Death of the Outsider, Gen, Genderfluid Character, Nonbinary Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-24
Updated: 2018-01-24
Packaged: 2019-03-08 21:59:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13467429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte/pseuds/literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte
Summary: "I have always wanted to be both man and woman, to incorporate the strongest and richest parts of my mother and father within/into me— to share valleys and mountains upon my body the way the earth does in hills and peaks... Woman forever. My body, a living representation of other life older longer wiser. The mountains and valleys, trees, rocks. Sand and flowers and water and stone. Made in earth." Audre Lorde,Zami: A New Spelling Of My Name.A brief exploration of the power of semblance and Billie’s complicated gender feelings.





	Semblance

The sea-weary wind sits heavily on Karnaca with an arthritic crack of dry leaves. The sun pulls the fleece of the clouds tight around itself, and a servant sweeping the floor shivers. She stops for a moment to brush the hair out of her face, and out of the corner of her eye, she sees a red uniform.

He's a middle-aged white man, about six feet tall. She sees the flat chest, the broad shoulders, the belly that hangs over his belt like a rock shelf formed by the waves - or, in his case, whiskey. He's handsome in an ordinary, unobtrusive way, like a pair of well-worn leather boots that wait by the door every night for tomorrow’s morning shift.

She imagines the weight of his body pressing down on her, the bristle of his facial hair between her thighs. She smiles warmly at him, even though she's numb from the cold.

Billie knows her secret. She knows what the servant is thinking about because it's the same thought that crossed her mind as she looked over the guard’s unconscious body and stole his face.

The semblance of a man wraps around her like the curve-obscuring uniform of the Whalers. The mask chitters in her hand like an insect, and soon it will molt to reveal the woman underneath.

“Good evening, sir,” the servant says.

The casual _sir_ thrills Billie. It’s stronger than being mistaken for a boy because of her short hair. It's deeper than being stealth as male for her safety. No one looks at her when she’s a him, and when she’s wearing the face of a white man, no one looks at her with fear.

 _(Where did you steal that piece of the Void?_ A woman not so different than Billie and at the same time her complete opposite, Dolores Michaels’ accusatory words burn at the back of her mind. What did she see in Billie that made her assume she had stolen it?)

What does she see now? The two faces of Billie are like twin sides of a knife, and the servant sees only the man. He nods at her. She watches him turn the corner, oblivious to the fact that his shadow doesn't match his silhouette.

The mask vanishes. The servant continues sweeping the floor. The whispers of the rats around her feet are as soft as the susurrus of the canal, and she looks at herself in the ripples of the water like she's looked a thousand times before, looking for the face that's always changing.

She turns the corner again. She walks up to the servant and says, “Excuse me.”

“I don't want any trouble,” she says. The warm smile is gone. She sees the face from the wanted posters and trembles. “Please leave me alone.”

Billie doesn’t know what she expected to happen. She aches for human contact - for a woman's touch in particular. She saw the calloused hands around the broom and the hard set of her jaw, and she thought she recognized something familiar. Something intimate with women in the cleft of her chin. But she was wrong, and she’s alone. 

The wharf breath of the wind against her face is like a lover whose name she cannot remember in the morning and wants gone as soon as possible. She displaces to the roof. Light penetrates the clouds, and she raises a hand to cover her eyes. It’s the hand that exists and doesn’t exist, is here and nowhere. Her eye perceives both at once.

**Author's Note:**

> i played stealth+clean hands and accidentally woke up dolores once, so im not sure if anyone else says that, but it felt especially meaningful coming from her.


End file.
